Mother's Day

Mother's Day this year was fabulous. I started my day with a fresh flower bouquet that Rusty and the girls picked from the yard. Rusty is very proud of his flower arranging skills. We went to church and had our annual mother's day pie eating get together. They YM and YW serve the mothers their choice of pie, cake, or cheesecake. When we got home Kyleigh grabbed her I love hugs shirt and altered it for the occasion to say I love Mommy. Rusty and Mike made me and Holly prime rib and king crab legs for dinner. It was to die for good. At bedtime Katelyn grabbed my face in her little hands and said, "Mommy, happy mothers day. You are the best mom ever."

"Ant's paradise"

These are the fun cupcakes we made for the achievement days mother daughter activity titled, "mom, me, and a dozen cupcakes." It was a cupcake themed activity with a cupcake exchange at the end. The hot dogs are made out of a circus peanut cut in half, a caramel rolled up and some yellow icing. The hamburgers are nilla wafers, a grasshopper cookie, yellow and red icing, dyed coconut, and sesame seeds. These turned out so cute. Thanks again to family fun (and Tasy for letting Kyleigh come to achievement days a few months early!).

Beauty and the Beast

The Kalaheo school play is pretty much the most amazing elementary school play on the planet. I'm sure of it. In the last three years they have done Charlie and the Chocalate Factory, Annie, and now Beauty and the Beast. Our friend Jackson was the beast this year. He did such a great job. When he changed from the beast into the prince he was laying on his back and lifted up off the stage. The rose had petals falling throughout the play. For the forest scenes they had a sheer stage curtain so you could see sillouettes of the wolves attacking Crazy Old Maurice and then Belle. We continue to be more and more impressed every year with this play. We took the kids on Saturday of opening weekend and then Holly took Naiya and the girls the next Saturday. They went especially to try their hand at the raffle for the beautiful yellow Belle dress. On Tuesday my friend Dawn (Jackson's mom) called and asked if we were home because she had a surprise for Kyleigh. She walked in with THE DRESS!!!! I screamed. Kyleigh isn't a screamer when it comes to surprises so she gave her sideways head tilt smile then ran to put it on and has hardly taken it off. I thought for sure it had been rigged for Kyleigh to win, but no, she won fair and square with her one little raffle ticket. I knew Holly would be so excited about it that I was going to take a special trip to her house just to surprise her. We called and she was leaving Costco. She ended up coming over here. When Kyleigh walked out in the dress she SCREAMED. She was holding Aliya, who promptly started crying. I held her while Holly admired the dress. Ridge saw Aliya crying so he started crying and came over to give her a hug. Really that has nothing to do with the dress but it was such a cute little hug. We are so excited to have won the raffle. That dress will make four little girls happy, one at a time.

Kyleigh at the play with Belle and the Beast.

May 4, 2011.

Ridge's word count

1. Mama
2. Dada
3. Bird (B, B, B)
4. Huck (uck, uck)

Easter

Our Easter pics didn't turn out so great. Kyleigh looked at the pictures I was going to post and asked, "why are you putting those on there, they aren't anything special." We started Easter this year with a family home evening lesson where we cut out pictures of Jesus from the Friend, glued a cardstock back on the pictures, looked up and read scriptures and wrote them on the back of the pictures. We hung them on our "Easter tree" (a branch). Our ward had a dinner and Easter egg hunt. It was fun to watch Ridge get excited about picking up the eggs. We also dyed Easter eggs and hunted them at home, and had a visit from the Easter bunny. The Easter bunny brought us some goodies and a cake making play dough set. We thought the Easter bunny was exceptionally generous this year, then we found out that he left American girl dolls for the neighbors. Kyleigh has been asking for an American girl doll for awhile. She has even considered spending ALL of her savings to buy one. No one said anything about the super nice Easter bunny next door. Not really sure how to respond to that one if they did. We had Mike and Holly and the Petersons over for a traditional Easter dinner. It was good food and good company.

We can't fail to say that we missed the Giles this year. We called to wish them a happy Easter. Kyleigh and I were guessing how many eggs they used for their hunt. Up 60 from last year, to 300. That made us smile. Nobody does Easter like the Giles.

Hope everyone had a great Easter.

Everyday April...

Victor Hill came to Kauai for some training and we got to hang out with him. He was a huge hit with the kids and the boys loved having him here, too.

Morning hug.

The swingset finally tipped over. It has been teetering on the slight hill in our backyard for almost four years. I think the bottom of one leg finally rusted out and over it went.

It rains almost every day in Kalaheo. Ridge is learning early to just get out and enjoy it.

We made Grandma Graves' rice krispy Easter nests at preschool one day. I taught preschool two days in April.

Ridge has learned to throw food all over the kitchen. The table was clean when he started eating this meal. He was pretty proud of all the food he got onto the table.

We have been spending alot of time in the little pool out back.

We had a neighbor kids pizza party. Each kid got to make their own pizza and we made more Easter nests.

The neighbors cut back their trees between our yard and theirs. It caused a big influx in lizard sightings. This guy seems to come around every time we eat lunch outside. It is fun to see the pouch under his chin blow up. You can kind of see it in this picture.

Geocaching

In the back of our minds we have always thought it would be fun to become geocachers. If you aren't familiar with geocaching it is best described as treasure hunting. Someone hides a container with a few random treasures and usually a log book. It may be hidden in a public place or miles into a hike. They input the GPS coordinates, some instructions, and usually a coded clue into geocaching.com. You go to geocaching.com, input your zip code and all the local geocaches come up. You decide which one you want to find and set out with the instructions and your GPS. When you find the geocache you take a treasure and leave one of your own behind. We didn't really think there would be an abundance of geocaches to find on Kauai so we never really looked into it. We were at a friends house a few weeks ago and their daughter had just gotten home from geocaching. That renewed our interest and this weekend we looked up the information (it turns out there are quite a few geocaches on Kauai) and set out on our treasure hunt. We went to a place called Cook's pine grove at Kahilli adventist park. A short hike (probably less than 1/2 a mile each way). The girls were so excited when they found "the treasure." They took their time deciding what they would take. They choose a marble, bead thing, and shirt pin. They replaced them with a small kaleidoscope, a fuse bead creation and a bottle of bubbles. They also had fun collecting air soft pellets in a variety of colors off the ground. We tried to find a few other geocaches around Poipu but we have a few kinks we need to work out of the geocaching system. We ended up at the boat harbor eating subway and catching hermit crabs. It was a great Saturday. choosing treasures.

Ridge is poking Mike with a stick. I love this picture.